The UK's top retailers are choosing a responsive mobile presence over mobile apps, according to a new report released this week by Episerver.

According to Episerver's latest 'State of Digital Commerce' report, smartphones have reached "near-complete adoption in the UK" and tablet ownership is at around 70%. However, despite mobile ecommerce being "hugely important" for retailers, a third (32%) of the UK's top retailers do not have a mobile shopping app.

The report, which looks at the mobile presence of 100 top UK retail brands, found that two-thirds (66%) of marketers are omitting mobile apps from mobile marketing campaigns.

Instead, the majority of retailers (56%) are choosing to focus on a responsive mobile presence. Eighty percent of the UK's top retailers have a responsive ecommerce website.

"This switch from mobile apps to in-browser experiences is largely being driven by the surge of mobile search and traffic, consumers have grown accustomed to managing their lives through a web browser," said David Bowen, Head of Product of Episerver. "As such, the idea of manually installing and launching a different app for each brand experience seems like an unnecessary hassle."